The great unwashed are vaguely annoyed. They need stirring

Written by By Suzanne Moore and published in Daily Mail on Mon 1st Jun 2009

VISIBLE: Liberal Democrats party leader Nick Clegg has finally made his mark during the expenses row

Something is missing, something it's difficult to put your finger on. Public anger and even hysteria about MPs' expenses is all around us. At least this is what the media keep telling us. But are you feeling it? Or am I sleepwalking through a revolution? Well it is half-term, so it's just possible that I am.

For this is a very British revolution: a bit of jeering on Question Time, some rude comments at public meetings. But are there crowds at the gates of Westminster demanding to be let in? Are we collectively winning back our right to be heard?

No. It's more moaning in pubs about what a bunch of toads MPs are. We are fixated by their greed and pettiness - the soundproofing of bedrooms, the need for certain Tories to be able to stay in certain gentleman's clubs.

The need for change is obvious, but now the politicians are telling us they are the ones who can manage that change. We are being offered, yet again, change from the top down, which is exactly what is wrong with the current system.

Even before all this malarkey, I wrote that Brown should call a General Election because power was clearly draining away from him. Now we can't have one because that would cause chaos.

More chaos than this? A complete breakdown of trust between the electorate and the elected has produced low-level chaos. MPs hanging on, scuttling about, begging for peerages, watching their backs...is all this stopping the process of government? Not really. Recession, unemployment and the car industry meltdown continue, but when MPs go on their extremely long summer break the country won't grind to a halt.

Many MPs are a combustible mix of gross self-importance alongside a dawning realisation of their actual powerlessness. It causes all sorts of moments of madness.

That, and living apart from their families, hanging round in bars conspiring, taking positions on things they don't care much about, getting whipped into voting for things they don't believe in. Like wars. No wonder they need the perks. Any of them with a brain cell knows that globalisation has rendered them impotent.

Yet still they cling to their self-importance. Shall we have proportional representation or AV-plus (which is not a vitamin, apparently)? All are claiming they should have reformed themselves all along. Yeah right. Each of them has an answer they prepared earlier which they have taken from extra-parliamentary campaigns: fixed terms, written constitution, different voting systems, decentralisation, etc. Only the Lib Dems can hold their heads high and even Nick Clegg has become visible as he talks of trying to sort out this mess.

The democratic deficit is now so big I wonder if, instead of reforming Parliament, we actually need it at all. Already I see that the list of independents proposing to stand at the General Election comprises mainly C-list celebs.

Why does a celebrity want to be a politician? Fame without responsibility is surely the better deal.

What is happening, and will surely be borne out by Thursday's European elections, is the long drawn-out death of party politics. 'They are all the same' in terms of fiddling is simply an extension of they all think the same. For as politicians have huddled into the centre ground, with most of them keeping their seats safe and warm, voters have felt they had no choice. We have not been listened to. The whole idea that these people - Brown or Cameron - now in any way 'represent us' is ludicrous.

The desperate squealing and squawkings we hear are the sounds of a class who think they really matter. Yet they only matter if we think they do. If a revolution was really happening we would be ungovernable. As it is we are still governed, but by those we distrust and disrespect.

The great unwashed are vaguely annoyed that they were right all along. They may bother to saunter to the polling booths, they may not. But someone will win no matter how few vote.

The system is self- sustaining as long as we stay passive. Change has to come from the bottom up.

The political class is an irrelevance and we now have to decide how to organise our own lives.

Are we up for it?